Hi all.
This is some news from various astronomy circles compiled by Amar and told
to me, which is what I summarize here. He had posted (on
comet_observing_india Yahoo! group) about this comet C/2006 P1
(McNaught)discovered by Robert McNaught, which is going to reach naked
eye visibility.
It will be a major attraction in the southern hemisphere, emerging after
perihelion at about 3-5 mag.
Robert McNaught (on comets-ml Yahoo! group), the discoverer, has discussed
its visibility and put up a table of date vs. optimum latitude for
observation. The perihelion distance is expected to be 0.17 AU - which is
EXTREMELY CLOSE! Members of comets-ml Yahoo! group describe this as "Comet
Bradfield on Steroids" - a BRIGHT, TWILIGHT comet.
The tail is expected to be like a search-light beam extending upwards from
the horizon as the coma is very close to the sun at perihelion, and hence
very difficult to see (due to twilight). The comet, at the low northern
latitudes of India (esp. Bangalore) is strictly a twilight object, making
life really tough!
Comet Elements for Cartes:
Paste the following line in C:\Program
Files\Ciel\cat\planets\Cometes.dat file (assuming you installed Cartes du
Ciel in C:\Program Files\Ciel - the default) to enable Cartes to show this
comet:
C/2006 P1 (McNaught) |2000|20070112.7983 |
0.170741|1.000011 |155.9780 |267.4146 |
77.8371 |10.0 |10.0 | MPC 57947
Then, open Cartes and go to the Preferences menu and select Catalog and
Object Parameters. Select the Comets tab and select C/2006 P1 McNaught from
the list and click Ok.
You should now be able to search for the comet's position using the Find
option (binoculars icon) on the toolbar. To find, select Solar System Tab ->
Comets Radio button and select C/2006 P1 McNaught from the Drop down list.
Our plans:
Robert McNaught predicts that for 12 deg. North latitude, the optimum
observation is on Sunday, 14th January 2007 at 1830 hrs (evening). Cartes du
Ciel shows that it is 5 degrees away from the sun at 4 degrees altitude at
1815 hrs. The coma magnitude is expected to reach +2 and this should be
quite a challenge despite this fact. Cartes shows that it is half a degree
from Mercury (4-5th mag) on the D-day.
The speed at perihelion is obviously very high (Conserve Angular Momentum
and verify this fact) due to very close approach and this means we have only
no more than 2-3 days for observing this twilight comet.
Amar and me have an ambitious plan of spotting this twilight comet
atleast once in that period with wide-field binoculars. For that we'll need
Western horizon with perfect visibility until horizon, even 1 degree!
because the comet is going to be very very low at early twilight (when still
lighted up). We plan to star-hop from Sun! and it should be in the same
field of the binoculars. Anybody interested in joining please contact Amar
on e-mail or me: +919840244714 (after Jan 1st) or +919945422780 (before Jan
1st).
Thanks.
--
Regards,
Akarsh.
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